What is the souce for the yellow river in asia?

Answer 1

At 5464 km, China's Huáng Hé (or Yellow River) is the second longest river in China after the Yangtze, and the fifth longest in the world.

It originates in the Bayankala Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China and flows through nine provinces of China before it finally empties into the Bohai Sea.

The middle of the Yellow River passes through Loess Plateau and produces substantial erosion. The large amount of mud and sand discharged into the river makes it the most sediment-laden river in the world--hence its name.

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Problems

1. Pollution

There are some problems facing this river, though, big problems. For instance, it is extremely polluted. Recently, China News Service reported sources from the Yellow River Conservancy Commission as saying that nearly four-fifths of the Yellow River is polluted.

According to water quality monitoring initiated in 1975, 60 percent of its water in 1980s was designated category 3 or above on a 5-point scale, meaning it qualified for drinking, fisheries and swimming. By the end of 1990s, this fell to 40 percent.

In March 2005, a government report said that over 72 percent of the river's water had dropped below category 3. Experts said that the rapid increase in sewage, uncontrolled discharge of waste water and the misuse of fertilizer have all worsened the situation.

2. Decreased water flow

Additionally, there is much less water flowing into the Yellow River today then there used to be. Qinghai Province is both the origin and source of more then half (59.2 percent) of the water that flows down the Yellow River. Recent data shows that the quantity of water from this area fell by almost 25% percent over the past decade. The dams at the Longyang Gorge dam and the Liujia Gorge dam have fallen to their lowest level ever.

Experts say that the reason for the drying up of the sources of water for the upper reaches of the Yellow River is a steady deterioration in the ecology of the region. The average elevation for the Qinghai Province region drained by the Yellow River is over 3000 meters. That high, the environment is fragile and natural disasters are frequent. Once the ecology of the area has been damaged, it is very difficult for it to be restored.

For the last decade or more extremely inadequate level of investment in the environment, very weak popular awareness of environmental issues, rapid and heedless development of the region as well as overgrazing have all contributed to a loss of soil over a wide area, the deterioration of the grassland, desertification of the land, and a decline in the land's capacity to conserve water.

3. Reduced glacier size due to global warming

Finally, global warming is reducing the size of the glaciers that feed the river. Global warming will dry out the source of the Yellow River, threatening water supplies to 120 million people, an environmental group said Monday.

In an October 2005 study commissioned by Greenpeace, scientists said global warming was melting glaciers which in turn was breaking up and drying out the land, leaving lakes and rivers without water.

"Climate change is wreaking havoc at the birthplace of China's mother river," a Greenpeace researcher said in China after releasing the study.

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the "roof of the world" and the source of both the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers -- China's two longest --, has seen an overall temperature rise of nearly one degree Celsius during the past 30 years, the study by scientists said. "The higher the altitude, the faster the temperature rises," it said.

The rise in temperature has resulted in the glacier area in the region decreasing in size by 17 percent in 2000 compared with its size in 1966.

In the last 30 years, the shrinkage rate of the glacier area is 10 times faster than that of the previous 300 years, the report said.

"From here it is a domino effect that harms the flora, fauna, landscape and people of the Yellow River source region -- and ultimately the river itself," said Professor Liu Shiyin, the leading author of the report.